Finally saw it for free. It's awful. Curtis is obviously too old to write coherently any more, it was like a beginner's attempt to do the Curtis "group of friends" thing. The lead guy sucks, hes just such a mournful confused sad sack all the way, and joy or fun (the horrible horribo recording studio wank) is so contrived and childish it doesn't stick. So we get to hear the Beatles great songs, but played and sung in a shitty amateur way, but we get to hear Ed Shitrens shit in full professional fidelity? Anyway, more importantly, it's just so goddamn slow, the pacing is awful. Who cares about relationship drivel? You know my name, look up the number. Plus the film hangs on the idea that Ed Shiteeran is the greatest songwriter of the age, and he knows it, and he can only be bested by the Fabs finest. That's the least believable part.

Finally saw it for free. It's awful. Curtis is obviously too old to write coherently any more, it was like a beginner's attempt to do the Curtis "group of friends" thing. The lead guy sucks, hes just such a mournful confused sad sack all the way, and joy or fun (the horrible horribo recording studio wank) is so contrived and childish it doesn't stick. So we get to hear the Beatles great songs, but played and sung in a shitty amateur way, but we get to hear Ed Shitrens shit in full professional fidelity? Anyway, more importantly, it's just so goddamn slow, the pacing is awful. Who cares about relationship drivel? You know my name, look up the number. Plus the film hangs on the idea that Ed Shiteeran is the greatest songwriter of the age, and he knows it, and he can only be bested by the Fabs finest. That's the least believable part.

The recording studio tweefest was where I checked out of watching the dodgy cam version I found when it was out in the cinema. Then I fastforwarded to the John Lennon bit and then I laughed and then, weirdly, I got goosebumps when he sang "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" to a class of schoolkids.

I'm looking forward to seeing multiple copies of this DS clogging up charity shops in January. I'm going to buy them all and then burn them in a massive bin and post the resulting plastic mess to Richard Curtis.

Would be an interesting idea if he actually thought it through. The entirety of popular culture would probably be completely different. But to just delete the keystone in the arch and then act as if everything is the same is just feeble.

I was really, really willing this to be decent. Went out of my way to will it up the road and down. I puffed special sorts of smoke about the laptop afore I put it on. I scattered special sorts of herbs about the desk. Mon now, saying. Be decent. I didn’t like that everyone was judging it without having seen a frame, decrying the thing on the basis of a this happens this happens this happens Wikipedia synopsis. I don’t think that’s any way to be critiquing a film, whatever its pedigree, however outlandish the plot. I think that’s no way to be going about judging anything. If it was fit to be reduced to a Wikipedia synopsis then they’d just have made a Wikipedia synopsis. Saved a lot of bother.

But. It’s a bit shit, really. For the most part. Some of it works. The Lennon scene that everyone was howling over the head of it when they caught sight of it on the Wikipedia is one of the better sequences, for my money. Lovely, strange, surreal little interlude. Some of Danny Boyle’s directorial flourishes are exciting enough in the moment. Just wee tiny aesthetic choices. Some odd wee decisions made here and there put me in mind of Millions now and then, which is still my favourite Danny Boyle film. But. Overall I’d say this Yesterday is probably the worst thing he’s done since A Life Less Ordinary.

There are several big Richard Curtis showstopping CRY NOW OK CRY NOW scenes that just don’t work at all. They’re unearned and just feel embarrassing. A whole bunch of folk not noticing it’s raining, so to speak. Not just once, at the end. All the way through. None of them land. Useless.

The writing is just lazy as fuck throughout. Like Curtis has forgotten what happened at the start of the scene by the time he’s writing the end of it.

The scene where Beatles Joe plays Yesterday to his friends in the pub, for example. He says right away that it’s not his song, it’s a song by The Beatles. None of them have heard of The Beatles. One of them says “you musicians assume that everyone else has the encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure pop bands that you have. Neutral Milk Hotel. The Beatles.” That’s not exactly word for word what he says, but more or less it is. Beatles Joe can’t believe it. He says “But… this is one of the best songs ever written” and another friend sort of screws her face up and says “you never used to be this cocky.”

He just said he didn’t write it! It’s not his song, he’s not saying his song is one of the best ever written, he’s saying this Beatles song is one of the best songs ever written. He just said it two minutes ago.

Ed Sheeran is crap. I quite like Ed Sheeran, I think he's a fairly charming presence on the chat shows and what not. But he's crap. That’s another thing. Another again is that there a fuck of a lot of outdated Brent-isms and even Tim-isms on display, and none of them work either.

And the ending makes no sense.

But. Whatever. The one interesting thing about it is that it was released in the same year as the far superior Blinded By The Light, both films in which the work of iconic Mojo magazine sacred cow White Folks With Guitars are adopted and repurposed by young British Asians. Blinded By The Light made a lot of that; Yesterday never mentions it. Which I guess is pretty progressive, really.

The biggest problem with the film is that it assumes that The Beatles were completely divorced from their place in time and someone writing those songs now would get the same success and adulation they got in the 60s. And that someone didn't come along and fill that Beatles-shaped gap at some point either. That and it is fucking awful in all other respects and has the classic late-period Curtis flaws of characters that don't behave or live like real human beings

The biggest problem with the film is that it assumes that The Beatles were completely divorced from their place in time and someone writing those songs now would get the same success and adulation they got in the 60s. And that someone didn't come along and fill that Beatles-shaped gap at some point either. That and it is fucking awful in all other respects and has the classic late-period Curtis flaws of characters that don't behave or live like real human beings

Don't forget the shitloads of bands doing Beatles-esque stuff at the time that failed to get picked up or make a name for themselves, completely autonomously and without inspiration by the Beatles until after their fame hit.

A high-concept that was also personal, Barth’s script was about a not-especially-successful singer-songwriter who, through an unexplainable event, becomes the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles. Barth’s protagonist books a few more gigs with his newfound superpower and achieves some cult popularity, but mostly wonders why his one-of-a kind songbook isn’t bringing him the same fame and fortune it once brought the Beatles, or the fulfillment he’d imagined.

That complaint - that in reality being the only person who remembers the Beatles would not suddenly unlock success - is the first thing everyone says when you talk about this film.

I think they could have got away with it if they went further with the conceit and said no, these songs really are literally magical, and just get passed around from time to time, turning people into superstars.

Or yeah he just gets nowhere, learns that plagiarism does not bring creative fulfilment, and kills himself.

Another snippet from that interview that caught my eye was that MacKenzie Crook worked with him on early versions of the screenplay. Imagine how much better the film would have been if Crook, rather than Curtis, had picked it up and run with it.

Another snippet from that interview that caught my eye was that MacKenzie Crook worked with him on early versions of the screenplay. Imagine how much better the film would have been if Crook, rather than Curtis, had picked it up and run with it.

Sex Lives of the Potato People II: It's the Beatles, Coldplay, Sheeran and Black Eyed Peas in a Room

That original idea sounds great and it fixes the gaping problem in the final film, namely that it's a story about an artist whose music has had no success so he plagiarises, and yet it has absolutely nothing to say about him, about being an artist, about original work, about the crisis he might face in considering why the art which comes from a personal place, from his real, lived experiences, has never succeeded, and what it means to claim ownership of somebody else's. Instead it's just a hollow film with nothing to say except 'aren't The Beatles so brilliant and magical?' It's a puff-piece playing, ironically, on the quality of somebody else's work.

And the fact that Curtis was going around saying 'oh I just got given a one sentence summary and then wrote my own version' is really fucking rum, given how many similarities there are. Even if he was telling the truth, that seems a cunty thing to do - and again, hugely ironic given the premise. Someone tells you about the premise of somebody else's script, and you say 'fuck them, I'll write my own version and we'll just do that instead'.

That original idea sounds great and it fixes the gaping problem in the final film, namely that it's a story about an artist whose music has had no success so he plagiarises, and yet it has absolutely nothing to say about him, about being an artist, about original work, about the crisis he might face in considering why the art which comes from a personal place, from his real, lived experiences, has never succeeded, and what it means to claim ownership of somebody else's. Instead it's just a hollow film with nothing to say except 'aren't The Beatles so brilliant and magical?' It's a puff-piece playing, ironically, on the quality of somebody else's work.

100% agreed - that's the real rot of the film, not the fact that it's unrealistic. It is definitely not the wankest film idea ever conceived.

And the fact that Curtis was going around saying 'oh I just got given a one sentence summary and then wrote my own version' is really fucking rum, given how many similarities there are. Even if he was telling the truth, that seems a cunty thing to do - and again, hugely ironic given the premise. Someone tells you about the premise of somebody else's script, and you say 'fuck them, I'll write my own version and we'll just do that instead'.

Hmm - is that cunty (assuming Curtis is telling the truth I mean)? He could probably have heard the premise, which to be honest is in itself not particularly original (I had the same idea for fuck sake), and gone off and written a new film without buying the screenplay at all. Barth, the original writer, wasn't obliged to sell it to him, and going by that interview he knew Curtis was going to rewrite it:

Quote from: Barth

My impression when they first told me ‘Richard Curtis wants to buy your film’ was that he was going to produce it". Then when we got into the final negotiations, they said, ‘Also, here’s the credit that he’s insisting on having’ where he’d be the sole screenwriter and then I’d get co-‘story by’ credit with him ... I’d been at this for five years at that point and figured it would be nice to just cash out and finally move on. So I accepted.

The cunty part is that apparently Curtis lied in interviews about what he did and didn't use, and that Barth didn't get proper credit or payment, but that's different.

Curtis is quoted in interviews smugly implying that he came up with the Harry Potter gag (and in others explicitly saying Sarah Silverman gave it to him) so it being in the original script is an eyebrow-raiser.

Another snippet from that interview that caught my eye was that MacKenzie Crook worked with him on early versions of the screenplay. Imagine how much better the film would have been if Crook, rather than Curtis, had picked it up and run with it.

Crook suggested that they make it about The Kinks so he could repeat his “Two Sisters” line from The Office.

Hmm - is that cunty (assuming Curtis is telling the truth I mean)? He could probably have heard the premise, which to be honest is in itself not particularly original (I had the same idea for fuck sake), and gone off and written a new film without buying the screenplay at all. Barth, the original writer, wasn't obliged to sell it to him, and going by that interview he knew Curtis was going to rewrite it:

The cunty part is that apparently Curtis lied in interviews about what he did and didn't use, and that Barth didn't get proper credit or payment, but that's different.

Absolutely he's not obliged - and I suppose there's a fair bit of naivety on my part at being aghast at what is probably fairly common practise in the cutthroat world of Hollywood - but it just seems quite off to me to think of someone with Curtis' wealth and pull hearing that someone else has poured their time and their energy and their experiences and feelings into a script, and then (purportedly) going 'well I like that idea, I'll just do my own'. I'm with you that it's not the most original idea (I'm pretty sure I posted quite early in this thread saying I'd long had a similar idea but based around Tolkien and Middle Earth), but there's just something about being pitched someone's idea and then automatically erasing them from the equation that rankles with me. It would be one thing if he was saying he read the script and loved it and just gave it a going-over to polish and perfect it, but if the dippy bastard's asking us to accept he wrote it all himself... I don't know, it just seems arrogant to me, the thought of him saying 'I don't even need to read the script,' (although he definitely did), 'I'll just do my own.'

Well, there's two separate things going on there, and in my view one of them is cunty and the other one is just business.

If you're a struggling screenwriter, and you get a call saying "a very famous and successful filmmaker likes your script and wants to buy it to use as the basis for a new script, and here's a large amount of money, what do you think?" there seems to be nothing dodgy there. You have something that someone has put some kind of value on and is offering you money for it, you know they're going to rewrite it and turn it into something else, and here's a big pile of money, and are you up for it or not? That's just an ordinary transaction, and as far as screenplay selling odds go it's a pretty good deal - it's hard to sell screenplays. It's also the kind of thing that happens allllll the fuckin' time.

Love Actually wasn't originally supposed to be a Christmas film but then Richard Curtis thought, "Hey why don't we have a holiday where we celebrate the birth of Jesus? We could have decorative trees, and give presents, and watch sappy movies and pop songs?"